


Not a Captain

by plutosrose



Series: Stucky Bingo 2020 [4]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Blow Jobs, Bucky's insatiable flirting, M/M, Post-Captain America: Civil War (Movie), Rimming, Social Media, Steve/His Guilt, a clusterfuck of legal issues, government negotiations, the news
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-11
Updated: 2020-08-11
Packaged: 2021-03-06 07:20:20
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,705
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25845694
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/plutosrose/pseuds/plutosrose
Summary: Somehow Secretary Ross trying to convince him to leave Wakanda is the least of Steve's problems.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers
Series: Stucky Bingo 2020 [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1830826
Comments: 9
Kudos: 134
Collections: Stucky Bingo 2020





	Not a Captain

The first few weeks in Wakanda had been rough. Knowing that Bucky was alive and close by made it even worse. After everything that Bucky had been made to suffer, the last thing that he deserved was to be put under all over again.

T’Challa had been kind enough to put up Sam, Clint, Wanda, and Scott in a hotel in the capital, and had let them know that the option for more permanent housing was on the table. It helped, Steve thought, to have them all close by. He missed Natasha, who had disappeared undercover again, but he couldn’t shake the feeling that she would find a way to contact him soon.

-

Pretty much every night since they’d landed in Wakanda, they’d had a movie night together, switching between hotel suites and Steve’s house every few days.

For the most part having company was good, but now that they weren’t actively chasing bad guys halfway across the globe, it was easy to let his mind wander to the lab where Bucky was and wasn’t.

“You know, I can tell you’re somewhere else right now,” Sam had told him when he cornered him in his kitchen. “And it’s not good for you.”

“I’m fine, Sam.”

Sam gave him a disapproving and disbelieving look. “The number of laws that I have helped you break is a lot. At least try harder to lie to my face.”

It was hard for Steve not to look a little amused.

“It’s okay not to be okay,” Sam shrugged. “I know you too are....close.”

Steve let out a sigh and rested his hands against the counter. “We were more than close, Sam. Before the war.”

“Yeah, we kind of all...got that.”

-

He had been beyond relieved when Shuri had called him one afternoon to let him know that she had found a solution for the trigger words. He’d been so relieved, in fact, that he hadn’t been able to figure out the last time that he felt so happy.

That was a lie, he knew exactly when that was. October 18, 1936, the moment that Bucky told him that he didn’t have to deal with his mother’s death alone.

It was even more of a relief to have him home--because now, this was his home. He couldn’t conceive of anywhere else he wanted to be in the world. T’Challa had offered Bucky asylum, which meant, as far as he was concerned, that Wakanda was now his home too.

And frankly, life was mostly good now. He and Bucky had had one fight about whether he should be there for his trigger word therapy sessions, but honestly, it felt so normal that he would have taken fifty arguments about his therapy sessions over the bullshit that had happened over the past few months.

And the bullshit that had happened since he had come out of the ice.

-

Steve had a tendency to wake up shortly after dawn, right as the morning news was being broadcast for the first time that day. Bucky was still curled up under the covers in his room, and would probably stay there until he had to get up for his therapy session in the afternoon. Not that he minded, Bucky deserved to rest as long as he wanted.

He settled onto the couch with a cup of coffee and turned on the television, only to come face-to-face with just about the last thing that he wanted to see on the news.

“Breaking news out of Washington late last night,” a woman with short, dark hair said. “The Department of Justice has contacted King T’Challa in an attempt to have James Buchanan Barnes extradited to the United States. Attorney General Dunbar said in a statement last night that Barnes, who was once the Hydra operative known as The Winter Soldier--”

Steve felt his stomach drop. He muted the news almost instantly, only putting the sound back on when he saw the anchors cut to T’Challa.

“I am standing with my friend, Captain Rogers, on this matter,” T’Challa said to an Associated Press reporter from their newly minted Wakanda bureau. “Wakanda is an independent kingdom and we have offered James Buchanan Barnes asylum in accordance with international law.”

Although having T’Challa stand behind them made him smile, he heard Bucky stirring and the last thing that he wanted him to see on television was anything even remotely related the Winter Soldier. “Change the channel.”

The television suddenly switched to a program where two men were sitting at a table. Steve didn’t recognize the first one, but he recognized Secretary Ross. He was suddenly glad the television didn’t have a remote, because he definitely would have broken it.

“We were wrong on Vienna,” Ross said to the man, who nodded and folded his hands in front of him. “But just because we were wrong on Vienna doesn’t mean that James Buchanan Barnes shouldn’t be held accountable for decades of murders. International law should be used to protect refugees fleeing civil wars--it shouldn’t be used to protect former HYDRA assassins. Frankly, I think it’s important that families of Barnes’s victims be given closure and that our nation be given closure.”

The program cut to footage of President Kennedy’s funeral. Steve’s heart clenched in his chest. He remembered seeing the recording in a museum--one that Nat had taken him to in a bid to get him out of his head when he’d come out of the ice, but this was the first time that he’d ever connected it with Bucky.

And frankly, he hated the fact that his mind was able to make that association so easily.

“Steve?” he heard Bucky call for him. Steve’s eyes widened, and he murmured another ‘change channel’ at the television.

Bucky padded into the living room, rubbing the sleep from his eyes. It had gotten particularly warm overnight in their house, and at some point, Bucky had pulled off his shirt. His gaze lingered far longer than he’d intended.

Bucky yawned and stretched, and for a moment, Steve’s gaze drifted downward. He’s almost confident that was entirely intentional, but he can’t focus when he wants to tear the futuristic, probably incredibly expensive, television off the wall in their living room and throw it directly into the stream behind their house.

Bucky quirked an eyebrow at him. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah, Buck, I’m fine,” Steve forced a smile.

He walked closer, until his chest was close enough for him to reach out and touch. But instead, he just stared at him for a very, very long time, as Bucky leaned in close, pressed a kiss against his cheek and whispered in his ear. “You’re a fucking liar.”

He had to excuse himself to the bathroom twice to jerk off before they went on a hike together that afternoon.

-

And then he jerked off a third time later that day because at one point during their hike, Bucky had nearly lost his footing, and when he’d grabbed onto his arm for support, he’d let his hand linger there for a while, and he hadn’t been able to get it out of his head.

-

It wasn’t that nothing had ever happened between them before, because it had. A lot, in fact. The problem was that it was all locked behind the wall that HYDRA had put up between Bucky and his past, and it didn’t feel right to suddenly blurt out, “Hey, do you remember the first time we kissed? Do you remember that when you’d go out with a dame you’d come home by 10 and we’d do things. Sex things?”

Okay, he wouldn’t have referred to it like that, but he definitely didn’t want to so much as give the appearance that he was setting expectations for Bucky when he was still coming home looking half-dead after every therapy session and sleeping for twelve hours at a time.

He might have jerked off to what had turned out to be an extremely vivid memory of Bucky, finally finally, shoving him into their mattress as hard as he’d begged him to.

-

Steve had decided, as a precaution, to keep the television turned off. The last thing that Bucky needed to hear about was the Department of Justice. The trigger word therapy was bad enough. He thanked the universe for the small mercy that was the extensive library of sci-fi novels that their house had been stocked with while Bucky had been in cryo, because otherwise, it might have been harder to distract him.

Bucky was sprawled across their couch and had his nose in a book. He wasn’t sure which book it was, and it didn’t frankly matter, because the way he was sitting reminded him of a sketch that he knew was somewhere in the Smithsonian archives.

Sighing to himself, he opened his laptop, wondering if he could distract himself. Except, when he opened Twitter, it became clear that that wasn’t going to be possible.

Didn’t the world have anything better to talk about than him?

#CaptainRogers  
#WhoShotJFK  
#CaptainWakanda  
#SokoviaAccords  
#AvengersAreOverParty  
#SokoviaTragedy  
#SokoviNO  
#AvengersComeHome  
#CaptainTraitor  
#WinterIsComing

And the last one was definitely porn.

His eyes had drifted down to the first tweet, and as soon as he caught sight of a brunet that looked suspiciously like Bucky deep-throating a blond that looked suspiciously like him, he was pretty sure that he’d had a heart attack.

“What are you looking at, Stevie?”

His mouth suddenly felt very dry. “Um, nothing, just lots of people sharing videos of um...birds....talking to each other.” Yeah, that sounded right and not suspicious.

Bucky quirked an eyebrow at him. “Can I see it?”

A blush crept up Steve’s neck. “Um, I closed it. Gonna go to bed now, goodnight.”

“It’s 4:30 in the afternoon!” Bucky called after him.

-

While Bucky was still sleeping, he watched Secretary Ross’s interview. Three times. He was beginning to think that Sam might have had a point about him not being fine. Lately, it seemed like the only two things he could do were obsess over whether the United States would finally get their hands on Bucky, and well, Bucky.

Because every so often, Bucky would grin at him in a way that suggested that he remembered what they used to be to each other, but he’d always stop short of actually saying something.

If Steve didn’t know any better, he’d think that Bucky was waiting for him to make the first move.

-

Associated Press - @APress - 23 min ago  
An anonymous source inside the State Dept. reports @SecRoss will be meeting with #CaptainAmerica in Wakanda.

Steve stared blankly at the screen. He’d spent the last few days reading every news article about Bucky that had come across his feed. It felt good to know which article was which, especially since Shuri had given Bucky a tablet of his own.

To say that Steve lived in fear of Bucky finding Twitter was an understatement.

But this was the first time that he’d ever come across something that didn’t mention Bucky and that only mentioned well, him.

-

“I think I would know who I was and wasn’t meeting with,” Steve said to T’Challa over dinner. He was just grateful that Bucky was engrossed in a conversation about flying cars with Shuri, so he didn’t have to worry much about being overheard.

“I don’t know who their source is. I can find out, but there wouldn’t be much point to it. Secretary Ross has asked me twice now if you would be willing to meet with him. Directly,” T’Challa told him. Steve scoffed.

“I don’t have anything to say to him.”

“Could you at least speak to him?” T’Challa asked. “I’m worried that he’s going to make a habit of speaking to me, and I would really rather he wouldn’t.”

-

The last place that he wanted to be at the moment was holed up in a palace conference room, especially since he knew that Bucky was in the middle of having a therapy session. It wasn’t helping him stay calm.

The only thing that was helping a little bit at the moment was the fact that Secretary Ross had agreed to speak to him over the phone--just a phone, and nothing else.

When the green light lit up on the phone, he let out a sigh, tried to will himself to stay calm, and picked up the call.

“You’re a hard man to get ahold of, Captain.”

He hadn’t particularly minded hearing himself referred to as ‘Captain Rogers’ by T’Challa, but hearing the words now from Secretary Ross, however, set his teeth on edge. “Not a Captain.”

“Right, right, of course. Well, I wanted to talk about something very important, Steve. You seem to have made off with half of the world’s enhanced individuals.”

“More than half, by my count.” He’s pretty grateful that Secretary Ross can’t see the fact that he’s smirking, although he can probably hear it in his tone of voice.

Ross does not seem impressed with him. “Look, I think it’s important for us to have a conversation about how the last few months have played out.”

“I don’t know what there is to discuss.”

“The United States Government was used like a puppet by Zemo to get what he wanted.”

“Sounds like a problem you’ve had for a while,” Steve tutted to himself.

“This is serious, Rogers.”

“I am being incredibly serious,” Steve hung his head in his hands and stared down at the conference phone. “I worked for SHIELD when it had been infiltrated by HYDRA for decades. I don’t know if half of what I did before the carriers went down was something I should have been doing, and I’m sure you don’t know either, considering the fact that HYDRA was everywhere.”

“The President is beginning to consider that it was a mistake to sign on to the Accords. If all goes well, there will be a press conference in about three days announcing that the United States is pulling out of them. He is concerned, however, about the other problem.”

Steve furrowed his brow. “What are you talking about?”

“You being in Wakanda, that’s the problem,” Ross sighed.

“You yourself told me to consider myself retired if I didn’t sign the Accords,” Steve snapped. “I didn’t sign the Accords, therefore, I consider myself retired. I fail to see the problem here.”

“If the President pulls out of the Accords, we are confident that other countries will do so as well. Steve, the United States is your home,” Secretary Ross pled with him over the phone in T’Challa’s conference room. This wasn’t as bad as Secretary Ross outright telling him that Captain America couldn’t possibly be living in Wakanda, but it came pretty close.

“Are you prepared to drop charges against James Buchanan Barnes?” Steve asked, clenching and unclenching his hands on the conference table.

The silence coming from Secretary Ross seemed to stretch on for an eternity.

“You know that’s really more of DOJ’s jurisdiction.”

“Then I guess we have nothing to talk about. Have a good day, Secretary.”

He reached out to hang up on the Secretary, when he said, “Wait!”

“I’m listening,” he said curtly.

“I can speak to my counterparts at DOJ and Homeland. I should be able to get charges waived against Sam Wilson, Clint Barton, Scott Lang, and Wanda Maximoff. I might also be able to convince the Secretary to expedite Maximoff’s citizenship application.”

Steve tapped his fingers against the table. “Well, it’s a start.”

He could hear a sigh on the other end of the line. “Does this mean that you will reconsider?”

“Are you going to drop charges against James Buchanan Barnes?”

He could hear another sigh this time, this time, significantly more exasperated. “That’s asking too much, Steve, the things that he’s done...the nation deserves to heal from it.”

“And the longest-serving prison of war deserves to heal from it too,” Steve snapped. “Waive the charges. Get Wanda citizenship. It’s what everyone deserves after you locked them in prison--indefinitely, and without a trial. Doesn’t sound particularly American to me, Secretary.”

Ross tsked on the line. Steve could picture him scrubbing a hand over his face and clenching his jaw into a tight line. He didn’t exactly make what he was thinking a secret.

Steve could empathize there.

  
“We won’t have a deal for them if you don’t agree to come back.”

Steve let out a laugh. “That’s fine. You know, I know how to use Twitter now. I wonder if I could get it trending if I started talking about how you held them without a trial in accordance with the Sokovia Accords. Do you know what trending is, Secretary?”

“Captain--”

“Not a fucking Captain, Secretary.”

“I don’t understand--”

“Secretary, I fail to see what is so hard to understand about this situation. Get James Buchanan Barnes pardoned, and I’ll be on the first plane home.”

There was a silence on the other end of the line. “I could maybe press the Attorney General, but he’ll want him to serve time.”

“How long?”

“Twenty years, at least. Probably thirty.”

“Hmm...have the longest-serving POW in American history serve thirty years in prison when he spent seventy years–longer than a lot of people have been alive, by the way--being forced to commit assassinations by his captors. That doesn’t sound very fair to me. Does it sound fair to you, Secretary?”

More silence.

“Well Secretary, since you don’t seem to have a serious offer, I’m hanging up now. Have a good day.”

-

When he came home, Bucky was awake, sprawled out on the couch, and watching the news.

He wasn’t sure if it was possible for his heart to stop over seeing his name on the news, but he was willing to bet that maybe, maybe it was.

“Captain America refuses to come back to America is kinda a lazy headline,” Bucky mused, studying the crawl on the screen.

“Change the channel.”

As soon as the channel changed, Bucky glared at him. “I was watching that.”

“You shouldn’t have to.”

“You want to tell me what that means?”

Steve shrugged. “It just means that you shouldn’t have to watch that.”

Bucky raised his eyebrows. “I was on the run for two years having hallucinations and panic attacks pretty much every day, I can handle people saying mean things about me on television. Is that why you’ve been acting so weird lately?”

Just about the last thing that Steve wanted to think about was Bucky having any HYDRA-induced hallucinations, so he focused on something else instead. “I haven’t been acting weird.”

Bucky got up off the couch and walked closer to him. Steve instinctively stepped back, which only made him come closer and him step back again. Until he hit their front door.

“Yeah,” Bucky breathed, so close that Steve had to vaguely wonder if they were breathing the same air. “You have been kind of acting weird.”

Steve did not know where to put his hands, so he settled for resting them against the door. The hint of amusement that was playing across Bucky’s features wasn’t really helping him stay calm.

“Hmm,” Bucky hummed to himself. “I know what would help.”

Steve was pretty sure that he had stopped breathing, because Bucky had dropped to his knees, right then and there, and started fiddling with his belt. Steve gulped. “You should--you should stop, you don’t--”

“--remember?” Bucky asked, hands gliding over his thighs. Steve whimpered and nodded.

Bucky licked his lips. “Maybe you should have just asked if I did?”

Well, he couldn’t fault him there.

Steve sagged against the door as Bucky took him into his mouth, hands carding through his hair as he sucked him down. “Fuck,” he murmured, staring up at the ceiling. He let out a groan as Bucky wrapped a hand around his cock.

If he looked down, he was seriously going to come in about three seconds. Possibly less than that.

He could feel that twist in his abdomen taking him higher and higher until he was furiously tapping on Bucky’s shoulder. “I’m gonna come if you don’t stop.”

Bucky pulled off and smirked up at him, which seriously wasn’t helping. “That’s kind of the idea, Stevie.”

Of course that would be the thing that made his hips jerk and come in Bucky’s hand.

While he was still catching his breath, Bucky licked his lips again. “I remember a lot. Most of my clear memories are about us. A lot of it is fuzzy, but us?”

Bucky shook his head. “That’s all still there.”

It was those words that had Steve hauling Bucky to his feet and pushing him against the wall. While Bucky might have had the patience to tease him, whatever patience he’d had he’d lost a long time ago.

He practically yanked Bucky’s panks off his hips (“Fucking hell, what’s the rush?”), before nearly throwing one of his legs over his shoulder so that he could sink his teeth into his thighs and run his tongue across his hole.

Hearing Bucky pant and murmur his name under his breath was making his cock strain against his jeans again.

“Jesus Christ,” Bucky muttered as Steve reached out to wrap his hand around his cock, precome making the slide easier.

Steve only pulled off to say, “What would your ma say about taking the lord’s name in vain?”

Bucky laughed, hair mussed and shirt wrinkled. Steve wanted to remember that look forever.

Maybe now he could.

-

That night, Bucky crawled under the covers with him. He couldn’t help but feel a sense of calm that had eluded him since they’d touched down in Wakanda a couple of months ago. “Did you seriously tell off the Secretary of State?”

Steve snorted. “Yeah, pretty much.”

“So you’re serious about staying then?” Bucky searched his face then--as if he was looking for a sign that he might be lying to him.

“Yeah, of course,” he murmured, pulling Bucky more securely into his side. “End of the line, remember?”

“Yeah, I remember.”

-

Associated Press - @APress - July 7  
@SecRoss confirms no charges filed against #WakandaAvengers–@notacaptain remains in Wakanda.

**Author's Note:**

> Not a Captain  
> Creator(s): plutosrose  
> Card number: 012  
> Link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25845694  
> Square filled: C2, Secretary Ross  
> Rating: E  
> Archive warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply  
> Major tags: Steve/His Guilt, Post-Captain America: Civil War, Social Media, The News, Bucky's insatiable flirting  
> Summary: Somehow Secretary Ross trying to convince him to leave Wakanda is the least of Steve's problems.  
> Word count: 3,705


End file.
